

Many times these keys are obtained illegitimately and they end up being refunded. In other cases the key is bought from another region so the devs do get some money, but far less than they would from a regular purchase.
I’m not sure exactly how the illegitimate keys are obtained, though. Maybe in trying to not pay the publisher you end up rewarding someone who steals peoples’ credit cards or something.
I’m sure many people don’t even think about that. Having to reinstall all your packages from scratch is not something they do frequently.
And for the people who are looking to optimize the initial setup, there are many ways to do it without a declarative package manager. You can: